Mender-convert for Debian-based Image for Compulab imx8plus fails

I have been trying to run Mender-Convert for debian-based image for imx8plus board without much success

https://www.compulab.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/iot-gate-imx8plus_debian-linux_2025-09-14.zip

Here is the config that I have been using:

MENDER_GRUB_EFI_INTEGRATION="y"

# Integrate with /etc/grub.d boot scripts.
#
# This has no effect unless MENDER_GRUB_EFI_INTEGRATION is enabled. Default is
# auto, in which case it will be detected. This is only supported for x86_64
# platforms at the moment.
MENDER_GRUB_D_INTEGRATION=auto

MENDER_SPARSE_IMAGE="y"

MENDER_ENABLE_PARTUUID="n"

# Version of GRUB to use. Note that there needs to be a precompiled version
# available at the MENDER_STORAGE_URL download source.
GRUB_VERSION=2.06

# Specific Linux kernel boot arguments
#
# Typically you would read the content of /proc/cmdline on a "golden image"
# add the appropriate arguments here.
#
# This will override the defaults set by by grub-mender-grubenv, if not an
# empty string
#MENDER_GRUB_KERNEL_BOOT_ARGS=""

# Type of kernel (bzImage or zImage)
#
# mender-convert will try to determine this value on its own, only set this
# if was not possible to auto-detect
MENDER_GRUB_KERNEL_IMAGETYPE="vmlinuz-6.6.52-4.0"

# Type of initrd image
#
# mender-convert will try to determine this value on its own, only set this
# if was not possible to auto-detect
MENDER_GRUB_INITRD_IMAGETYPE="initrd.img-6.6.52-4.0"

# Ignore broken UEFI support in certain U-Boot versions (see MEN-2404)
MENDER_IGNORE_UBOOT_BROKEN_UEFI="0"

MENDER_IGNORE_MISSING_EFI_STUB=1

# Mender storage configuration
MENDER_PARTITION_ALIGNMENT="8388608"
MENDER_BOOT_PART_SIZE_MB="512"


MENDER_STORAGE_TOTAL_SIZE_MB="12000"
MENDER_COPY_BOOT_GAP="n"

All of the y/n flags above have been tried.

Different grub versions have been tried, i.e 2.06, 2.12.

Many times I was able to boot to Grub terminal and try to boot by manually specify boot images:

error: no such device: e7ee47c5-3240-4315-b95f-2dbb7fc93436.

In other attemps, I was able to specify initrd and kernel images, but the boot stoped at initrd terminal, with timout waiting for rootfs

With yocto build, I was able to succesfully boot with the following configs

Found EFI removable media binary efi/boot/bootaa64.efi

872448 bytes read in 22 ms (37.8 MiB/s)

Working FDT set to 43000000

Card did not respond to voltage select! : -110

No EFI system partition

No EFI system partition

Failed to persist EFI variables

Booting /efi\boot\bootaa64.efi

EFI stub: Booting Linux Kernel…

EFI stub: EFI_RNG_PROTOCOL unavailable

EFI stub: Using DTB from configuration table

EFI stub: Exiting boot services…

[ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x410fd034]

[ 0.000000] Linux version 6.6.36-1.0-gb93daaad0807 (oe-user@oe-host) (aarch64-poky-linux-gcc (GCC) 13.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils) 2.42.0.20240723) #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon Oct 27 12:37:01 UTC 2025

[ 0.000000] KASLR disabled due to lack of seed

[ 0.000000] Machine model: CompuLab IOT-GATE-IMX8PLUS

[ 0.000000] efi: EFI v2.10 by Das U-Boot

Please kindly advise what to attempt in this case.

I found out that there are actually two efis on the /boot partition:

  • /boot/efi/boot
  • /boot/EFI/BOOT which contains mender grubs

Trying to use the EFI instead of efi then the boot process complains about missing hashsum function